EPA's greenhouse-gas rules draw U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny

Posted: 10/16/2013 |
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The U.S. Supreme Court said it will scrutinize the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever push to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, agreeing to hear appeals from industry trade groups and Republican-led states.

The justices today said they will decide whether the EPA was justified in setting up new permit requirements for stationary sources of pollution, including power plants and factories. The Obama administration is seeking to reduce carbon emissions it says threaten public health and contribute to climate change. Dozens of trade groups, companies, public policy organizations and states pressed nine separate Supreme Court appeals, six of which the court agreed to hear. The EPA is erecting “the costliest, farthest-reaching and most intrusive regulatory apparatus in the history of the American administrative state,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued in an appeal joined by Alaska and the American Farm Bureau Federation.